possible world, and all judgments of the actual world based on such speculations, are vain and idle imaginations.[43] [43] See Appendix XXXII. I may add, that when a man argues, as Comte does, that we can know nothing of final causes, nothing of the purposes which things are meant to accomplish, and yet that they might have realised their final causes, fulfilled their purposes, better than they do, he obviously takes up a very untenable and self-contradictory position. If we can have no notion of the purpose of a thing, we cannot judge whether it is fulfilling its purpose or not, whether it is fulfilling it well or ill. The denial of the possibility of knowing the ends of things is inconsistent with the assertion that things might have been constituted and arranged in a happier and more advantageous manner. Organic nature has been still more severely criticised than the inorganic world. There have been pointed out a few fully developed organs, as, for example, the spleen, of which the uses are unknown, and a multitude of organs so imperfectly developed as to be incapable of performing any serviceable functions. Even the most elaborate organisms have been maintained to have essential defects; thus the eye has been argued by Helmholtz to be not a perfect optical instrument, and on the strength of the proof one writer at least has declared that if a human optician were to blunder as badly as the supposed author of eyes must have done, he would be hissed out of his trade. Stress has been laid on the fact that abortions and monsters are not rare. Many seemingly intelligent contrivances, we are reminded, serve mainly to inflict pain and destruction. And the inference has been drawn that the first cause of organic existences was not Divine Wisdom but mere matter and blind force.